The Tennessee Playbook, Part 2: Short-Yardage Situations

Where it's never wrong to run the dang ball

This is Part 2 of a series on what plays Josh Heupel and the Tennessee offense run in particular situations. Part 1 looked at the plays UT most often starts the game with (Part 1a: Pass Plays [it’s screens] | Part 1b: Run Plays).

Gaining big chunks of yards and making the defense cover every inch of the field are hallmarks of Josh Heupel and the Tennessee offense. But what about when the field is condensed in short yardage situations or at the goal line? This installment of The Tennessee Playbook will focus on what Tennessee runs in those short-yardage situations—for the purpose of this post, that will be defined as 3rd and 3 or less or 4th and 2 or less—and in goal-to-go situations.

Surprisingly Unsurprising

With how wide-open, fast, and exciting UT’s offense has been since Heupel took over, you might expect the Vols to be unorthodox in short yardage. But Tennessee overwhelmingly does what you’d expect any team to do with three yards or less to go: they run the dang ball. In fact, in 183 short-yardage scenarios under Heupel, Tennessee has run 78.7% of the time (144 plays). There have been 34 pass attempts (18.6%) in those situations and another five pass attempts that turned into QB scrambles (2.7%). All five of those scrambles were Hendon Hooker, by the way, which took me down an… I’ll say interesting path.

Short preface: I’m not interested in dragging kids that devoted years of their life to UT, so don’t take any of this as an attack on Joe Milton. There are strengths and qualities that Milton possesses that earned him the starting QB spot at Tennessee, and I hope they translate into a fruitful NFL career for him. However, in short yardage situations, the coaching staff seemed to be reluctant to keep the ball in Joe’s hands—at least compared to Hendon Hooker. For instance, pass plays were called on 29 short-yardage downs in two years with Hooker at QB (with a 63% success rate), and just 11 times with Milton behind center (45% success rate). Five of those passes became scrambles with Hooker, but none with Milton. Whether Joe did not have the green light or the gumption to run, or whether the opportunity did not present itself, I do not know. I do know Milton was only asked to QB sneak twice, which seems odd to me for a QB with his size. Tennessee also ran a lot of Inside Zone Read (IZR) in short yardage with Hooker, but not so much with Milton. This is part of an overall trend I covered in the look at running plays that Tennessee opens the game with. For whatever reason, IZR gave way to Outside Power Read under Milton, whether that was running style or coaching philosophy change.

Similarly IZR was a large part of the short-yardage package when Hooker was the QB, but not so much under Milton. Basically, short-yardage read option plays were a non-factor with Milton at QB. By my count, Hendon Hooker was asked to run read option, run the ball, or throw the ball on 44% of his short-yardage plays. Joe Milton was only asked to do the same on 20% of his short-yardage plays.

Again, this isn’t a hit piece on Milton. But I think most Vol fans would agree that Hooker was a better QB than Milton. And there were other factors too; Hooker had a top-10 NFL Draft pick OT blocking for him, and a Biletnikoff Award-winning WR catching his passes. I just think looking at how the offense ran under Hooker is valuable looking forward because now UT has potentially a better QB than either of them in Nico Iamaleava. Will Nico be asked to run as much—or more—than Hendon? We’ll know in a few months, but in the meantime we can look at how Tennessee has handled short yardage with the previous two QBs.

42 Yards & a Cloud of Dust

So what running plays does Tennessee rely on in short yardage? In addition to the aforementioned IZR, there’s Duo Dive and Insert. Let’s talk about Duo Dive, a play that looks and works a lot like Inside Zone, but is a gap scheme rather than a zone scheme. That means instead of using the covered/uncovered rules we covered in the IZR video and letting the RB find a lane to run through, Duo calls a predetermined gap that the OL is going to build double team blocks around, creating a hole for the RB. The Vols ran a textbook-perfect example of this against South Carolina in 2023.

Schematically it looks like this:

Notice how the OL work to get their butts facing the gap that the RB is aiming for. The coaching point related to this is run through common color, meaning you always run between the guys with the same color jersey as you—don’t get fancy and try to run around them. While this example of Duo went for a 42-yard TD, you really only need 3 or 4 yards for it to be a successful play on 3rd or 4th and short. The Vols have a 70.4% success rate with this play in short yardage, so don’t expect it to go away any time soon.

Another UT favorite in short yardage is Insert. If you’re old enough to remember when everyone ran out of an I formation, this play used to be called Iso, as in isolation, because you’re blocking everyone except one LB who is being isolated for a block by the fullback. Moose Johnston blocked this play for Emmitt Smith in Dallas throughout the 90s, just like Greg Amsler was the lead blocker for Reggie Cobb and Chuck Webb on this play in the late 80s for UT.

Nobody runs a traditional Moose/Amsler style fullback in their offense anymore, so the modern version of Iso uses a TE that’s lined up off the line of scrimmage, also known as the Y position (you’ll sometimes see this play called “Y-Insert” as well).

In this example against Texas A&M in 2023, Tennessee uses a more condensed formation than usual to get more blockers in. Typically Iso or Insert involves a double team at the point of attack, working up to the backside LB. In this case, there is no backside LB so you’ll see a brief double team that splits off onto the next most dangerous man, the play side DE.

Although Iso is my personal favorite football play, for Tennessee in short yardage it only has a 42% success rate. It’s probably more of a changeup to Duo than anything else.

Throw the Short Ball (Or Don’t)

What about the slightly less than 30% of short yardage plays where Tennessee throws the ball rather than running? There’s not one dominant scheme the Vols use when throwing the ball in short yardage. Tosser is one concept that is used with some regularity, and it simply consists of slant routes run by the receivers. Here’s an example:

I’m not going to draw it up because it’s a dead-simple scheme—all slants all the time. And the success rate isn’t anything special, right around 50%. In fact, throwing in general doesn’t have a great success rate for Tennessee in short yardage, with right at 56% success. For example, my absolute least favorite play of the 2023 season came on 3rd & 3 against Georgia. This was on UT’s second drive of the game and was a crucial down as the Vols led the game 7-3 early. Had Tennessee gone down the field and scored a touchdown, a 14-3 lead over the Bulldogs might have played out very differently. Even a field goal would have been keeping pace with UGA. But Tennessee ran a bubble screen on 3rd & 3 that got stuffed behind the line:

In the best case scenario, that play left Squirrel White 1-on-1 with a UGA defender fighting for those three yards, which would be tough enough. But in the actual case scenario, Squirrel caught the ball 2 yards behind the line of scrimmage, with his back to the defense, and the lead block got beat, leaving him no chance to get the yards.

With Duo Dive having about a 70% success rate, you can see why Heupel and Co. tend to lean on the run game in those situations a lot more.

Punch It In

It shouldn’t be surprising at this point that Tennessee’s favorite play in goal-to-goal situations is Inside Zone Read. This was especially true when Hooker was the QB and particularly in 2021. In ‘22, UT transitioned to more power schemes, with Duo Dive getting equal play with IZR at the goal line. The 2023 offense did not have a particular play that stood out as the go-to, with IZR, Inside Power, and Flood passing concepts getting just about equal run. The Vols did find themselves in fewer goal-to-go situations in ‘23, which isn’t surprising considering the less explosive nature of that year’s offense. In fact, the goal-to-go success of that ‘22 team is just further evidence of how good that year’s offense was—the 2022 Tennessee offense scored on 54% (35/65) of their GtG plays. I’m not saying they scored on 54% of their trips inside the 10; I’m saying that when they snapped the ball inside the 10, there was a 54% chance they’d score on that particular play. By comparison, Tennessee scored on 40% (26/65) GtG plays in ‘21, and 30% (17/57) in ‘23.

One goal line play I want to highlight—because I think we’ll see more of this with Nico at QB—came against Iowa in the Citrus Bowl. This is Lead Play Action Bootleg, coming at 1:54 of the third quarter to put Tennessee up 21-0:

I think Nico could have thrown that ball for a TD, but I also think there were a few plays in the bow game that Nico extended with his legs when he didn’t have to. The main takeaway here though, is that “Flood” concepts like this one were just 3% of Tennessee’s play calls in 2023, but they made up 7% of the calls against Iowa. Doubling the use of flood routes might have been a tendency breaker to fool an Iowa defense that is notoriously good at knowing opponent tendencies, of it might have been a signal of things to come in the new era of Nico Iamaleava at quarterback.

Next time on The Tennessee Playbook: Third Down for Whomst? A look at Tennessee play calling on third down under Josh Heupel.